Louise Marquet in Le Dieu et la bayadère (Les Danseuses de l'Opéra No. 6). Lithograph coloured by hand by Alophe, ca. 1860.

A dancer stands facing the viewer on her right leg with the foot turned out, her left leg to the back with the foot pointed; her right hand is on the hip and her left holds her skirt. Her head is half turned to her right with eyes raised. On the crown of her head she wears a flat 'gold' filigree cap with drop pearls over the forehead; the sides of her hair are bound with gold and drop pearls. Around her neck is an elaborate pearl necklace, consisting of five rows linked by bars at the sides, with pendants from the top three rows and the three lower rows dropping in increasingly long strands, the last falling to below her bust. Her off-the-shoulder dress has a white bodice edged with gold; fitting over this to below the bust, is a blue top edged with 'gold' is cut with a very low neck to fasten under the bust; the wide straps are edged with 'gold' coins. From the left shoulder to right waist is a white sash. The wide bell-shaped stiffened skirt has a white below-the-knee underskirt, with a decorative band around the hem with diagonal lines set with minute flower motifs and edged with bands of ribbon. The overskirt is cut on a wide inverted V and is scattered with minute flower motifs and edged with 'gold' ribbon. Around the waist and hip are elaborate 'jewelled' belts. On her wrists and ankles are 'gold' bracelets and her apricot-coloured shoes have turned-up toes.

Given by Dame Marie Rambert

Louise Marquet was a soloist at the Paris Opera in the 1850s. Le Dieu et la bayadère had been performed at the Paris Opera since the 1830s. The print is No. 6 in the series Les Danseuses de l'Opera, published ca. 1860. There were 14 in total, all the work of Alophe.
The print is part of the collection of dance prints amassed by Marie Rambert and her husband, Ashley Dukes in the first half of the 20th century. Eventually numbering over 130 items, it was one of the first and most important specialist collections in private hands.
Rambert bought the first print as a wedding present but could not bear to give it away. As the collection grew, it was displayed in the bar of the Mercury Theatre, the headquarters of Ballet Rambert, but in 1968, Rambert gave the collection to the Victoria and Albert Museum. Although it is often referred to as the Rambert-Dukes collection of Romantic Ballet prints, it includes important engravings of 17th and 18th century performers, as well as lithographs from the later 19th century, by which time the great days of the ballet in London and Paris were over.

A bayadère was an Indian temple dancer. Parts of the costume, like the overbodice and the style of the jewellery, are taken from Indian sources, simplified and grafted onto the pointed bodice and bell-shaped skirt of the a 19th century ballet costume; the resulting stylized stage costume would be recognized by audiences as 'Indian'.
By 1860, photography had become a viable commercial medium, and several of the prints in the series Les Danseuses de l'Opera seem to be copies of photographs. Maybe this was because most photographs were quite small and, of course, sepia toned; translated into lithographs, they could be larger and then hand coloured, making them more suitable for display.

E.5032-1968